Skinned

Skinned by Robin Wasserman

Lia Kahn lives in the not so distant future. After the wars and natural disasters, only the poor live in cities. Only the poor have babies that are not genetic masterpieces.
Lia's father has high credit. She does not live in a city. She is rich and popular. Whatever Lia does or likes is the next hot thing.
Lia takes her sister's place in the family car with the destination coordinates already places in the GPS. Cars are rarely 'driven' by a live driver. In an out of the ordinary, bizarre fluke, Lia is in a car wreck. Her body badly burned and limbs ultimately lost, her family chooses to turn her into a 'mech'. Her brain is scanned and put into a mechanical body, made to look and feel as close to human as possible. Lia has to learn to speak and move all over again. Once she has control of her new body, Lia is taken home.
Even though Lia feels like Lia most of society sees her as a non-living machine. Lia tries to find her place in a world she didn't choose to become a part of. Befriended by Auden, a boy that she would never have been friends with before the accident, Lia tries to find out if she still belongs with the humans or if only the mechs understand her now.
The friendship between human boy and mech leads to disaster and Lia is faced with the fact that she is indestructible and this could prove dangerous to any humans she is around.

A fun futuristic book with a great look at the expanding bounds of technology. There were times when the relationships didn't seem deeply investigated enough. I also felt like the book ended in a sigh instead of a bang.

Rating 4
Rating R Excessive use of profanity. Sexual content but not sexually graphic. Teen sex. Lesbianism.